Transcription

1 陈劭雄 CHEN SHAOXIONG t i m e z o n e 8 Boers-Li Gallery

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5 陈劭雄 CHEN SHAOXIONG t i m e z o n e 8 Boers-Li Gallery

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7 陈劭雄 : 从便携式的街景到私人外交 Chen Shaoxiong, From Portable Streets to Private Diplomacy Hou Hanru

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9 如何观察事物?

10 How to Look at Things? How to look at things around us and make sense of them is the most basic question that we try to figure out everyday. In other words, perception of the world is the central activity of our very existence. But the answers are by no means self-evident. Instead, our perceptions vary, evolve and mutate considerably according to different contexts, from physical to cultural, from social to political. In fact, this process of varying, evolving and mutating constitutes the very core content and driving dynamic of the history of human civilization, and impacts everything in our lives. Visual art is no doubt the most direct and efficient territory to explore and experiment with different modes of perception and representation. Interactions between artists and their surroundings, between their individual or collective visions, imaginations and intellectual interrogations, and the constantly changing social realities are the most decisive conditions for the makings of modes of perception and representation, namely, modes of cultural production at large. The Chinese contemporary art scene, as one of the most vibrant centers of global art, against its particular background of economic, cultural and social developments, has also generated some of the most significant experiments with issues of perception and representation. Chen Shaoxiong, born in 1962 in Shantou, Guangdong, and living and working mainly in Guangzhou, China s southern gate towards the world, is certainly one of the most inventive and influential figures in the field. In fact, contemporary Chinese society, culture and their artistic expressions are highly complex and diversified. Complexity and diversity are exactly what make today s China so dynamic, powerful; so full of excitement and, equally meaningful, contradiction. The immensity of the country s territory and the geographic, historic and cultural differences therein are so obvious and intense that the notions of nation-state and identity are infinitely challenged and reinvented. It s further intensified by the dramatic debates over and implementations of the modernization project that intends, ultimately, to make China a new powerhouse in today s globalization. Almost all regions and main cities have produced their own cultural characteristics, languages (dialects and langage) and lifestyles that, inevitably, in the process of integration into both the national movement of modernization and globalization actively embracing influences from the outside world and radically change the Chinese way of living have also generated some highly interesting hybridities Chen Shaoxiong lives and works mainly in the Pearl River Delta area encompassing the rapidly modernizing regions of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Zhuhai and Macau. This is China s most alternative region, the main laboratory of economic, cultural, social and even political openness. Thanks to the openness of individual and social mindsets and relatively liberated social control, people in the region can enjoy more freedom and have developed particular capacities to imagine, envision and execute inventive forms of everyday life and social communication, hence social structures based on multi-directional and multicultural principles that shrewdly escape from the dominance of the official ideological, political and social systems of control. This is particularly evident in the making of the new urbanscape and visual cultures prompted by the unprecedented speed and scale of urbanization of the region that has now turned it into an endless city-region, a kind of immense collage of multiple forms of urban typologies and populations from different origins. This renders the region an extremely exciting locality for all kinds of experiments in terms of economic, social and cultural innovations. What is particularly important to notice is that the main energy for such innovation comes mostly from bottom-up social claims that, through DIY initiatives and anticipations, are able to force the top-down power system to adapt to real change! In contrast to the early Chinese avant-garde art movement from the end of the 1970s, and especially in the 1980s in political centers like Beijing rooted in direct confrontation with and revolt against the official ideological and visual paradigms and institutions, experimental art from Guangzhou and the PRD region have been oriented towards non-confrontational proposals aimed at opening up a new horizon of change beyond the established models of struggle. The artistic production generated within the region largely reflects the more democratic categorization of things and social hierarchy that prevail in the region. Pleasant co-existence of high and low, intellectual and pop culture, between official propaganda and popular media, between formal and informal economics, and so on, are often optimistic and full of humor, and consistently critical without falling into political

11 便携的街景

12 clichés. Ultimately, they embrace diversity and change without any intellectual presumptions. All of these factors have allowed artists to become the most liberated and willing to transgress any established boundaries of cultural and political systems. They are by nature utopian, playful, humorous, and even ironic, with a strong sense of pragmatics. In the early 1990s, Chen Shaoxiong and his friends Lin Yilin and Liang Juhui founded the first influential artist group in the region named, curiously, Big Tail Elephant Working Group. The group was joined by Xu Tan a short time later. For almost a whole decade, the group, operating as an intelligent and efficient dialectical formation between collective dynamics and respect for individual characteristics, managed to self-organize and realize some of the most original and critical interventions into the process of China s urban expansion. Like urban guerrillas, they invaded typical sites of urban development such as construction sites, half-finished buildings and expanding streets to realize their often ephemeral performances, installations and exhibitions. More radical than the Situationist dérive, they occupy new urban sectors, interrupt the normal process of construction and turn them into veritable temporary autonomous zones (T.A.Z. à la Hakim Bey). Those T.A.Z.s open up unusual and uncontrolled spaces for urban experimentation from physical, bodily experiences to public debates on social topics. Hence, some of their most historic works of art were produced. Today these works are seen as landmarks of Chinese and international art histories of the period. The group, having inspired a whole generation of artists from the region and beyond in the 1990s, has decisively influenced the evolution of contemporary art s engagement with urbanization an increasingly significant aspect of today s global contemporary art scene. Chen Shaoxiong s artistic achievement and contribution to the group are personally meaningful. Different from Lin Yilin s persisting interests in the relation between the body and the urban space, Xu Tan s focus on the power relationship between Chinese urban development and global politics and Liang Juhui s inquiries into the social impact of urban density, Chen Shaoxiong immerses himself in a more distant but somehow more intellectually engaging question perception, or the particular impacts of drastic urban change on our perceptive faculties. After his first series of performances and installations exploring the relationship between urban energy consumption and bodily resistance, he presented a series of video installations in the form of perceptive devices that demonstrate efforts to negotiate with the improbable balance between fundamentally precarious, contradictory elements of our perceptive faculties and their objects, notably the rapidly changing urban scene. His installations refer to some major figures in art history Seesaw (1994), an installation with a gun potentially triggered by a seesaw balanced between two monitors showing seascapes, and Change the TV Channel, Change the Bride s Decision (1994), a robot dressed in a bridal gown with a head made of a TV set with a live broadcast, are obviously inspired by Marcel Duchamp s Large Glass and visual and linguistic puns. Chen Shaoxiong s series Sight Adjusters ( ), in the form of binoculars, invites the audience to experience the impossibility of perfect reproduction of reality through perceptive devices and negotiates with the contradictory constraints of the impossibility and the pleasure of desiring for perfection. This furthers the tradition of extending visual art through scientific and technological research (seen in Albert Dürer s famous woodcuts of perspective research and other Renaissance works) to confront the contemporary scenarios of urban mutation that are much more dramatic, radical and exciting. They function as devices to demonstrate the ever-changing and uncertain relationships between the beholder and the speedily transforming urban world outside. The speed of change of this urban world is so fast that any attempt to grasp it in a static way is doomed to fail. The images behind the TV screens and the two lenses of the binoculars are always changing, shifting between totally disconnected and arbitrarily bridged scenes that constantly alter and restructure the meanings of the objects and scenes. The beholders are forced to look in to the lenses in voyeuristic positions. What they get are not only perverse pleasures but also puzzling questions about the reliability of their perceptions of the real world. This is exactly how urban change in Chinese cities can impact our intellects and ways of living. It s a radically mutating and intriguing new world. One should learn how to deal with it inventively just like the bride should make her decision of whom to marry at the last moment while watching the TV channel shifting! Portable Streets Chen Shaoxiong is fascinated by urban change. However, different from many others who are stunned by the booming high rise concrete urban forests hundreds of skyscrapers that appear on mainstream media and official socialist and capitalist propagandas symbolizing the success of the dominant powers he is more attracted by the low-life on street level. He understands that urbanization does not only signify hardware constructions. More importantly, it involves the social transformation process of generating a truly urban and civil society the rise of a new urbanized citizen class, immigration from rural areas, and introduction of consumer society. The formation of social, economic and political systems, as well as new modes of visual and linguistic communication

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14 and corresponding cultural values, is a key step towards integration into the network of global cities. And the street is the most immediate and ideal location to encounter and grasp such a process. As an artist attracted by the change of his time, Chen Shaoxiong decides to focus his artistic endeavors to record life at street-level. However, he is not interested in utilizing highly sophisticated cameras and processing techniques offered by modern photography. Instead, He resorts to the most convenient instrument of recording to create his work. He chooses to use simple, cheap, reactive compact cameras to literally shoot whatever he sees on the street: all kinds of people, objects and signs. At the same time, he is not particularly interested in producing carefully organized urban archives. He simply captures and displays whatever runs into the lens. There is a kind of amateurism in his work. It shows the very fragility of photography as a mature, over-established mode of representation and the necessity to abandon and deconstruct this mode in order to catch up with the pace of change in the contemporary visual environment. The outcome is often funny, uncanny and uncomfortably challenging. This is a conscious decision. He states that, living in and looking at his home city of Guangzhou, he finds himself like a tourist who constantly discovers new faces and new things at every moment. He is deeply attracted by the ephemeral surprises caused by the incessant changes of the cityscape and its people. In order not to miss any of them, he opts to rely on the decision of the camera s shutter to include everything by pumping it all into the lens. Photos are like theatre, still shots of the extremely complicated theatre of human life. To recollect those interesting process, I invented a method of photo-collage. Its specialty is that its picture can be infinitely extended, and its time volume is exactly the scope that I need to watch this immense theatre of human life. Due to respect for every individual, everyone in the theatre is considered a protagonist. The concrete method is that I photograph every person, every street sign, every car, every tiny object such as a trash bin, and print them out according to the proportions of their sizes. Then the images are cut out and transformed into three dimensional cardboards to reconstruct street views at my home. This photo-narrative like a miniature kingdom is what tells my understandings of representations of real life situations. 1 Clearly, assuming himself to be a permanent tourist living in his home city reveals a very important aspect that decisively changes the nature of contemporary cities from mutually separated localities with fixed characteristics to more generic, mutually connected and influenced globalised urban sites that take mobility, in both external and internal directions, as the core driving force of change. People not only observe and enjoy cultural differences when they are travelling to other cities. They are also witnessing, participating and consuming new differences in their own localities generated by the process of urban change impacted by globalization. Sitting at home is no longer an experience of being home. Instead, it s more and more the adventure of traveling to an unknown place. As Boris Groys eloquently depicts: The times in which we live are thus an era of post-romantic, that is comfortable and total, tourism; marking a new phase in the history of the relations between the urban ou-topos and the world s topography Cities are no longer waiting for the arrival of the tourist they too are starting to join global circulation, to reproduce themselves on a world scale and to expand in all directions. As they do so, their movement and proliferation are happening at a much faster pace than the individual romantic tourist was ever capable of. This fact prompts the widespread outcry that all cities now increasingly resemble one another and are beginning to homogenize, with the result that when a tourist arrives in a new city he ends up seeing the same things he encountered in all the other cities. The experience of similarity among all contemporary cities often misleads the observer to assume that the globalization process is erasing local cultural idiosyncrasies, identities, and differences. The truth is not that these distinctions have disappeared, but that they in turn have also embarked on a journey, started to reproduce themselves to expand. 2 In 1997, Chen Shaoxiong made his first 3-D photocollage street view piece titled The Street Dropped from the Sky, a portable box containing three levels of images forming a street. Since then, he has produced a large number of similar works. Often, they are combinations of images collected from different cities, and resettled against the new backgrounds of the different cities to which the artist travels. Boris Groys points out: But above all, it is today s artists and intellectuals who are spending most of their time in transit Today the utopian impulse has shifted direction acknowledgment is no longer sought in time, but in space: Globalization has replaced the future as the site of utopia. So, rather than practicing avant-garde politics based on the future, we now embrace the politics of travel, migration, and nomadic life, paradoxically rekindling the utopian dimension that had ostensibly died out in the era of romantic tourism. 3 This is a new condition of artistic and cultural production today. And Chen Shaoxiong s photo-collage street view series, with tens of variations that connect them to different local contexts around the world, do not only reflect such a qualitative change of the nature of artistic production and definition of the profession; they also actively contribute to the mutation itself. Finally, they embody a new type of

15 躲避飞机的高层建筑

16 utopia, one that is conceptualized and unfolding in the dimension of contemporary urban space. They are dropped from the sky and now brought around the world, like the new street itself! The amateurism and portability implied in Chen Shaoxiong s street view photo-collages are an appropriate choice. They reveal that the artist is paying much more attention to how new modes of visual communication produced by mass media influence today s artistic imagination and procedure rather than any static mode of High Art. His interest in photography is primarily in its capacities for reproduction, distribution and circulation, the very dimensions of mass media inscribed in the collective memory of society. This logically incites him to become aware of the fact that, in the age of YouTube, digital moving images are becoming an increasingly essential form of up-to-the-minute representation and communication. This not only allows everyone to develop one s own potential to become an artist, but also encourages the breakdown of the established, modernist ideology and hierarchy in terms of art media. Now, all forms of expressions and media can become a tool of mass communication without having to fall back to the progressionist conception of new and old media. It s exactly in this context that we can understand the newest developments in Chen Shaoxiong s work, along with quite a number of Chinese artists, namely, resorting to animation ink painting videos. Since 2005, Chen Shaoxiong has realized a series of ink painting animation videos shown in various versions of installations. Ink City (2005), Ink Diary (2006) and The Days (2007) are diary-style records of the artist s everyday trajectories across his home city and his meetings with friends and family members. Combining video animation, the newly discovered medium of TV commercials and internet cultures, and ink painting, a specifically Chinese art language, to depict city life shows a highly conscious decision to search for relevance in confronting new forms of urban culture no longer founded on historic and geographic difference, but rather upon the dynamism that continuously generates new differences and hybridities in the competitive process to become more and more generic and global. The new visual culture now intentionally encompasses all kinds of influences and elements, ranging from the most experimental to the most conservative, from the past to the future, while the original hierarchies among them are totally eradicated. Hybridity is the key. It is the usage of this multi-media hybrid that renders Chen Shaoxiong s seemingly simple and easy-going scenes of everyday memories painted in a realistic style with ink extraordinary. The randomness of the fragmented recollections of memorized, unconnected and illogical moments in everyday life, or as the artist insists, the withdraw[al] of the (logical or linear) narrative 4, generates a particularly beautiful rhythm that absorbs the audience into a swift, hallucinating swirl of sentiment that zooms in and out of the amazing urban world. Here, a kind of familiar and intimate communication between the art work and the audience is gradually shaped and installed. The artist states: Ink City has translated photographs shot during two years into ink paintings and then condensed them into a video of three minutes. The objective recording of the photographs have been transformed by hand painting. This process rationalized all those that are missed, differed and forgotten. Both the ephemera of photography (fragments of reality) and the narrative structure of video (segmental process of reality) have considerably reduced my pain of struggling with the paradox. 5 And this presents a way to solve the fundamental existential paradox in the contemporary, globalised urban world. High Rises that Dodge Airplanes Chen Shaoxiong s inquiries and questions of perception regarding the changing urbanscape extend beyond simple fascinations with the physical spectacle of movement and change. He understands perfectly that the current urban mutation towards a newly globalised world implies and expresses all kinds of economic, cultural, social and political shifts that intensively restructure the real world we are all living in. Along with the booms of high rise buildings, freeways and neon signs that turn our new cities into theatrical spectacles, urban spaces are also being turned into testing grounds for new economic, social and political relationships and structures. Through competition and struggle for domination in the process of global restructuring, these testing grounds are transformed in turn into veritable battlefields of geopolitical conflicts between different nations, cultures and political organizations. Cities, especially cosmopolitan ones, are more and more exposed to the fate of becoming involved with new forms of geopolitical conflicts and wars, including both formal and informal acts of violence. What is interesting is that we tend to call those informal acts of violence, often driven by bottom-up claims of the oppressed for equality and power, terrorism. No city in the world can escape from such an entanglement. Cities are now, indeed, sites for global conflicts and negotiations. Thus, perceptions of the exciting new urban spectacle also signify confrontations with and considerations of the complexity of current social and geopolitical conditions. In some specific historic contexts, these conditions can become highly radical and even extreme. 9/11 is doubtless the most infamous example. In addition to the fatal violence and destruction that the event brought to urban life, it also suggested an irreversible,

17 公众参与

18 globalised change of direction in urban development every city in the world, as a part of the network of global cities in the age of global wars, is now forced to consider this kind of violent conflict. And we should be ready to live with it, and, especially, learn from it, in terms of how to understand this tendency as an expression of deeper social, political, economic and cultural collisions between diverse groups of populations. Coming from various and often endlessly complicated historic backgrounds, these groups are struggling for the rights to both live in and dominate the present and the future of the world. Unfortunately, coexistence of these diverse and often mutually opposing groups is a highly difficult and endless game of quarrels and fights. Chen Shaoxiong, like many other artists, is absolutely sensitive to such a tendency. In fact, his everyday life has already been directly and indirectly affected by this new global climate terrorism is a regular topic in the media and urban conversation. And this has almost naturally become a source of inspiration when he looks into further developing his research and exploration of new urban life. In an interview, he states: 9/11 is very close to me. It s only 2 or 3 meters away, the distance between me and the TV set when I watch TV. This is how it is as an image. But as reality (if reality really exists and appears the same as the image on the TV), the distance between me and the event of 9/11 is the same as the one between my hometown of Guangzhou and New York where the event took place. So 9/11 is for me very close at some times and very far away other times. 6 Then he came up with the most spectacular, amusing, and pungently ironic video installation piece Anti- Terrorism Variety for the 2003 Venice Biennial (Z.O.U: Zone of Urgency) that proposed to turn some of the most famous new landmark buildings in China (the City Hall of Guangzhou, the Eastern Pearl TV Tower of Shanghai, etc.) into a new form of anti-terrorism architecture that could bend their bodies to defend against or counter-attack the planes hijacked by terrorists in 9/11. Following this, a whole series of installations, paintings and objects including Anti-Terrorism Chess, BBS: If They Are Coming and Zippo, were created. The innovative design of the flexible high-rise buildings were inspired by some uncanny situations and behaviors of people facing violent events such as terrorist attacks, and, according to the artist, could dodge aircraft in all sorts of different ways, without damaging airplanes carrying innocent passengers. This is the most perfect idea I could come up with to prevent and fight terrorism. For the present, no architects are able to construct such a building. I hope however, that someday they will acquire this capacity. 7 With this purely unrealistic and utopian scenario, Chen Shaoxiong is by no means proposing a useful or effective solution to fight against terrorism and other violence in a time of generalized geopolitical and urban conflict. Instead, he solicits us to watch and re-examine this kind of fictive, surrealistic and humorous scenario from another perspective in order to question, on the one hand, the reliability and realness of the images related to the spectacle of violence, and on the other, the very reasons and mechanisms that provoke this kind of events, namely the clash of civilizations, that define the unsolvable struggles between the global powers and the dominated. As a classic solution to or ending of tragedies, the artist proposes that we resort to black humor: Whether in reconstructing major international political/media events or in dealing with tragedies of personal life, it s equally important to have a sense of humor. In many cases, a sense of humor shows another possibility implied in reality. Or it can create a dream that is closer to the will. This kind of dream can render some inevitable situations in reality ambiguous and distant. Every person needs sense of humor. The state also needs it. 8 At the end, Chen Shaoxiong says: My dream is: politicians can make politics artistically instead of politicized art. And, art is about providing one more choice, one more possibility. When unquestionable events become unbelievable, art can prove the believability and reliability of those unbelievable ideas. 9 Public Participation Dealing with the hot topic of terrorism is inevitably a political engagement. More precisely, Chen Shaoxiong s recent work focuses increasingly on the question of the political significance and function of urban space and architecture, especially their effects on the construction of social relationships. The city is a public space in permanent evolution. It is an infinite process of mutual influences flowing between its inhabitants and its physical formation. Urban politics is the outcome of such an interaction. Chen Shaoxiong s inquiry into the representation and effects of events of urban violence is a logical step in bringing him further towards questioning the collective memory of and participation in the changes of urban forms and conditions. In particular, he emphasizes the necessity of involving public participation in the next stage of his work. After the series Anti-Terrorism Variety, he produced two sets of painting installations that were open to public intervention. Referring to the popular tool of online exchanges among users, he named the series BBS: If They Are Coming. The works display scenes of hypothetical terrorist attacks, military conflicts and occupations of the cities where the works were presented (Guangzhou and Tirana, etc.) and asks the public to partake in its completion by using stickers to answer a set

19 私人外交

20 of questions about strategies and methods to be adopted to accomplish the terrorist attack missions. The scenarios imagined by the artist are clearly borrowed from recent events of urban terrorist attacks and military actions happening in geopolitical hot spots such as Iraq, Israel/Palestine, Afghanistan, etc. Their displacement and grafting onto the peaceful cities of Guangzhou and Tirana in which the public see the works are so unlikely that they are rendered totally fictive and funny. The tension between the actual violence of the events, the playfulness of the images and texts abstracted from their original context, as well as the contrast between the real threats posed to those living in war zones and the cool appreciation of media consumers watching the events on TV and in newspapers, have made the work incongruously funny and uncanny. The public find themselves in an amusing but somehow uneasy and anxious position. Again, through producing this kind of ironic tragicomedy, Chen Shaoxiong manages to mobilize the public via their interactions with images and texts, and to intimately negotiate the political issues related to their urban environments, the spaces of today s global conflicts. In this series of works, Chen Shaoxiong purportedly reintroduces painting, a traditional and popular art form, as if it could more directly and effectively communicate with the general public. However, just like his resort to ink painting for his animation videos, his use of painting the traditional medium is never simply a return to the past. Instead, it is back to the future by blending it with all kinds of new media and experimental languages including video, computer animation and projection. He brings the experiment to an even more open and innovative field: public participation. In his recent painting series Collective Memory Cityscapes, he invites students and members of the general public to reproduce famous urbanscapes in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and other major Chinese cities using their thumbs and paint. The selections of the sites are systematically related to the political and economic landmarks utilized by the state propaganda machine as symbols of China s glorious history and revolutionary success. Typically, they include Tian an Men Square and the Great Wall in Beijing, Oriental Pearl Tower and People s Park in Shanghai, Haizhu Square, Sun Yat-Sen Memorial in Guangzhou and the Potala Palace in Lhasa. These landmarks are frequently employed by the mass media to form the official image of China, and hence its official identity. Obviously, as the most viewed photographic images in Chinese society, they have the strongest impacts on Chinese people s memories and imaginations of their country. Calling on untrained individuals to reproduce them on canvas with their thumbs is clearly an attempt to test their faculties of memory. It s also an examination of how propaganda systems have affected the private worlds of these individuals. Every single work is to be formed by thousands of thumb prints of tens of people. This collective participation, on the one hand, re-appropriates the strategy of social mobilization of the propaganda machine that imposes a collective identity over individuals. On the other, it ends up distorting the images. The impossibility of perfectly reconstructing the memorized images both individually and collectively reveals the real nature of political mobilization itself: it is a permanent struggle between the official ideology and individual resistance, between political correctness and personal deviation. Chen Shaoxiong also states that the aim of using thousands of thumb prints of the public to reproduce the images is to match physically, analogically, the surface of digital photography so popular today. It represents democratization of image culture and intellectual production: This is to return digital photos to pixels of various sizes. They are results of collaborations of the people who have lived in the areas depicted in the landscape paintings. Human finger prints replace the chemicals for photo processing. It s a technique situated between a photography darkroom and painting production. It s a collective s remembering of its living space. Today, the change of environment happens faster than human memory s regression. 10 If Andy Warhol s paint-by-numbers proposal in his Do It Yourself (Landscape) (1962) has revealed a fundamental shift in the nature of artistic production at the peak of consumerist society, Chen Shaoxiong s call for collective participation to reproduce the cityscapes by memory and by thumbs follow a similar logic. What is really significant here is that the original meaning of digital print is actually fingerprint the oldest system of identity check and control! Somehow, one can start questioning the artist s real intention: perhaps his ultimate aim is to use a very simple method to subvert the politically and technologically sophisticated established system of contemporary image production in the age of digital technology so crucial for identity and social control. Private Diplomacy At the same time, mobilizations of collective collaboration, such as those in which Chen Shaoxiong engages, imply a process of community building and enhancement of bottomup social initiatives that critically reexamine cultural and political realities. In a time of globalization, it is unavoidable that these efforts should be extended beyond national boundaries to a new geographic and cultural dimension. Transnational collaboration is a natural form of artistic production

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22 today. Chen Shaoxiong understands this, and increasingly makes it a new focus of his work. Interestingly, like his approach to the city that always stems from his immediate experiences, his transnational collaboration also begins with his closest neighbors. Since 2005, he has developed various projects in collaboration with the Japanese artist Tsuyoshi Ozawa and the Korean artist Gimhongsok. As a Chinese artist actively engaged with both Asian and global art scenes, Chen Shaoxiong has found friends abroad with whom he can share common interests and pleasures. Since 2005, he has collaborated with Ozawa, an artist with a history of focusing on creating dialogue and exchange with others, calling his art sodan (dialogue in Japanese). Together they developed a series of projects titled Guangdong- Tokyo. Referring to the ancient Chinese literati game Qushui Liushang (floating the wine glass to be shared by all friends along a twisted brook), both artists produced ink paintings to record their everyday experiences and visions in continuous dialogues. The paintings were then delivered between Guangdong and Tokyo by international express mail and gathered to be shown in various venues. This collaboration has later developed into other forms such as performance, installation and so on. What is even more radical is that Chen and Ozawa have managed to involve their respective families in the artistic process, and have coordinated their meetings regularly as art events. In the summer of 2006, the two families gathered in Beijing for 20 days in the name of their Summer Holiday. Together, the parents and two daughters lived between the city and the gallery space of Boers-Li Gallery. Each day, they came up with new ideas and made objects to reflect and record the process. All forms of everyday life, from eating, playing and working to sleeping, were materialized in various objects and performance events. The public was also invited to join in and share the process. Trans-regional/national dialogues and collaborations are an increasingly important field that more and more artists are devoted to exploring. These explorations can allow them more openness and freedom to venture into new forms of creation. More significantly, these practices are also an ideal way to respond to and participate in the making of new individual and collective identities in the age of globalization. These identities are founded on a novel, process-oriented perspective prompted by confrontation, dialogue, exchange and interaction between individuals from diverse backgrounds. New forms of living and thinking hence creating are based on the dynamics of a global multitude that surpasses the established static and highly conservative concepts of nation-state, national and ethnic identity and historicity that have been largely integrated into and manipulated by the dominant power systems. Developing transnational collaborations while breaking down the boundaries between nations and deconstructing the notion of identity based on nationality implies a subversive challenge to all kinds of modern power systems that tend to systematically turn all transnational cultural and artistic exchanges into interstate diplomacy. What is even more interesting is that more and more efficient transnational collaborations are being carried out at personal, private and societal levels in a doit-yourself manner, rather than being organized by any nation-state officialdom. This creates a more effective structure or channel for global exchange, and a model of globalization that respects individual freedom, cultural diversity and difference. This generates a new global structure of cultural and even political dialogue, coexistence and exchange based on proximities between individuals who form up the multitude rather than traditional groupings conditioned by notions of the people or the masses, which have been so exploited, exhausted and utilized by dominant power systems.11 Ultimately, in this new world of proximity nurtured and formatted by innovative explorations of everyday life experiences, the quotidian, as Michel de Certeau emphasized, produces a completely fresh geopolitical situation that is fluid, complex, cellular, ever-mutating, and therefore constantly creative. According to Arjun Appadurai, this is a major strategy and world vision developed by all kinds of resistant forces (including those generally termed terrorists ) against imperial dominance and the modern world order ruled by liberal capitalism. It can also be explored and utilized by populations who are calling for real freedom and struggling to construct a grassroots globalization project and initiate bottom-up cellular democracy. 12 Obviously, Chen Shaoxiong and Tsuyoshi Ozawa have captured such political implications in the making of their realm of proximate collaboration. They understand that, by dissolving political discourses into everyday parole, they can create a freer and much more flexible space to re-examine and redefine crucial notions, interpretations and significances of historical and contemporary events. In their collaborative projects, just as Chen Shaoxiong did with his Anti-Terrorism Variety, the artists reintroduce discussions on historical entanglements between China and Japan and attempt to propose their own, individual and down-to-earth comprehension. They have explored the different terminologies and definitions of the same events and dates in the complicated history of Sino-Japanese relations and exposed contradictions to public view by simply exhibiting everyday objects in a neutral way. For example, in the Summer Holiday project, cardboard boxes are covered with dates of events related to the war, conflict and reconciliation between both countries written in black, white and red colors to represent their differing significance for the people of both countries in order to reveal how they have been educated or

23 后记 [1] 为什么我要拍摄广州街景?, 陈劭雄, [2] 旅游者的再生时代,Boris Groys,Art Power,MIT 出版,2008,P105 [3] 旅游者的再生时代,Boris Groys,Art Power,MIT 出版,2008,P105 [4] 三种媒介之间: 陈劭雄对 < 墨水城市 > 的自述, 陈劭雄, [5] 三种媒介之间: 陈劭雄对 < 墨水城市 > 的自述, 陈劭雄, [6] < 花样反恐 > 陈劭雄答胡昉的提问, [7] 花样反恐, 陈劭雄, [8] < 花样反恐 > 陈劭雄答胡昉的提问, [9] < 花样反恐 > 陈劭雄答胡昉的提问, [10] 集体记忆 城市风景, 陈劭雄,2006, [11] 群体: 帝国时代的战争与民主,Michael Hardt,Antonio Negri,2004, 企鹅出版社 [12] 小众的恐惧 一篇关于地理愤怒的文章,Arjun Appadurai,2006, 杜克大学出版社

24 brainwashed to hold opposing views by their own authorities. The artists objective exposure of the events and dates, and their independent interpretations, differing from each other according to their own experiences, educations and perspectives, could be considered mistaken, irrelevant or even illegal by the official ideological machines and public opinion. But nevertheless, the artists have come up with totally free and alternative versions of history. Indeed, what is really manifested here is that the artists have intelligently proven that alternative views on history and political discourses, or alternative histories, are not only possible, but also necessary. In this specific case, it s also an alternative form of diplomacy private diplomacy. It s the very guarantee of the possibility of a grassroots and cellular democracy. By nature, transnational collaboration in art always contains a utopian dimension working beyond individual self-expression always demands an idealist common ground. And this is often the most political dimension of the work itself. Chen Shaoxiong and Tsuyoshi Ozawa have hence pushed their collaborations further to develop their alternative readings of history and reality towards a truly imaginative and utopian perspective. To make things even more open, they have invited their Korean friend Gimhongsok, a wonderful artist from the same generation, to join their adventure. Extending their humorous and ironic exploration of the historically problematic relationship between China and Japan in the project Guangdong- Tokyo, they, on the one hand, implicate a third persona, a Korean, to further complicate this relationship Korea has for centuries been a bargaining chip between these two Asian superpowers. On the other hand, they bring the adventure retrospectively towards an unknown, fictive and utopian direction. The three artists have decided to work on a longterm project to excavate and reconstruct a fictive capital city for the three countries: Xijing, the Western Capital, which is both the ancestor and future heritage of the current capitals called Tokyo (the Eastern Capital) Beijing (the Northern Capital), etc. Over the last few years, the artists have created their own version of Xijing through mock research, investigation, and interviews and brought the results together as a unified installation to prove the existence of such a lost paradise the very root of the common prosperity and troubles shared by the three nations. They call themselves Xijing Men. Their efforts not only suggest an alternative reading of the historic past, but also bring the artists to confront the current reality, especially urgent social, political and cultural issues. In 2008, when China held the Olympic Games in Beijing and boasted its great success as a new superpower, the Xijing Men decided to mount their own Olympic Games. Of course, they took place in Xijing! The events were held in the most unlikely sites such as family homes, hotels, and galleries, while the only athletes were the artists and the audience simply their family members. Mimicking the serious official games in a most comic and funny way, their games were totally ironic and ridiculous If the official Olympic Games represent a national and political utopia of becoming a global superpower and a heavyweight in international diplomacy in the most impeccable, rigid and solemn manner, then the Xijing Men s private games represent exactly the opposite: free, playful, uncontrolled, full of failures and laughter. If the utopian project of the official Games is ultimately to gain superior and oppressive powers over the world, the Xijing Olympics are precisely its parody and derision. It is a private diplomacy that voices the claims of the bottom of a society striving for its own way of being. They are definitely much more open, free, energetic and vivid, and much closer to people s hearts. Private Diplomacy When I was finishing this text, a last minute shocking event happened: in the late evening of 8 February 2009, the night of the traditional Chinese Lantern Festival, TVCC (an inverse image of the new CCTV headquarters, also designed by Rem Koolhaas OMA), one of the most spectacular edifices in Beijing freshly constructed to celebrate the Olympics and the new success of the city as a new global centre, was almost entirely burnt by a simple firework for the lantern festival celebration! The images on the TV are terribly overwhelming, almost comparable to the twin-towers on fire on 9/11, What s even more stunning is that the fireworks used on the occasion, according to the official media, are exactly the same type as those used for the opening spectacle of the Beijing Olympics a few months ago! Is there a kind of destiny out there? After Anti-Terrorism Variety, should Chen Shaoxiong now design a new type of anti-fire high rise building? San Francisco, 10 February 2009

25 1 Chen Shaoxiong, Why do I photograph street views in Guangzhou? on 2 Boris Groys, The Age of Touristic Reproduction, in Art Power, MIT Pess, 2008, p Ibid, pp Chen Shaoxiong: Among Three Media words on Ink City by Chen Shaoxiong, on 5 Ibid. 6 Chen Shaoxiong, interviewed by Hu Fang, Variety of Anti-Terrorism, on 7 Chen Shaoxiong, Anti-Terrorism Variety, on www. chenshaoxiong.com 8 Chen Shaoxiong, interviewed by Hu Fang, Variety of Anti-Terrorism, on 9 Ibid. 10 Chen Shaoxiong, Collective Memory Cityscapes, 2006, on 11 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri: Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire, 2004, Penguin 12 Arjun Appadurai: Fear of Small Numbers, an essay on the geography of anger. 2006, Duke University Press

26

27 行为 performance 装置 installation 录像 video 录像装置 video installation 动画 animation 摄影 photography 摄影装置 photo installation 绘画 painting 雕塑 sculpture 合作 collaboration

28 时间之外的时间 Time after Time A Dialogue between Chen Shaoxiong and Pauline J. Yao 姚嘉善 : 陈劭雄 : PY: I d like to start by asking about your earlier works. I am curious as to why all of your earlier artworks contain timeframes and numbers in the titles, such as Seven Days, 72.5 Hours and Five Hours. Why choose these specific lengths of time? CSX: Those specific numbers are the lengths of time during which those pieces existed, and are objectively measurable amounts of time. Like Five Hours, that was a performance at the entrance to a bar, and the bar owner could only tolerate me being there for five hours. But then the police interfered, and the work only existed for two and a half hours. All of my works from 1991 to 1993 are titled after units of time. At that time social life was very disappointing, and I wanted to take the concept of reality out of temporality through my work. But really, what I wanted to express was a kind of temporality outside of time. 七天的沉寂 Seven Days Silence 广州第一工人文化宫 Guangzhou No.1 Workers Palace, Guangzhou

29 1991

30 姚嘉善 : 陈劭雄 : PY: If these works represent time outside of time, then do they also on some level function as artworks outside of art? In other words, at that time, how were you defining art? CSX: There was a period of time when I was very interested in this question, What is art?, when I was very doubtful about the established definition. At that time saying something looked like art was just another way of saying I despised it. On the other hand, I ve always felt that this activity of definition is like an assigned topic, in that it can be directed toward any particular attribute. 耗电七十二个半小时 72.5 Hours of Electricity Consumption 1000 X 1000 X 300 cm 姚嘉善 : 陈劭雄 : PY: Movements like happenings and Fluxus also addressed these ideas, the boundaries between art and life or the definition of art. They also produced works with deep relationships to time. How did you respond to these movements? CSX: At that time I was very interested in the idea of happenings, but I don t think I shared the desire of those artists to create a theatrical relationship with a nonart audience. I want my result to be a nothing-happening, devoid of content, independent, just empty time. I see the Fluxus artists as a complementary inverse of my work. One of them, Ben Vautier, thought that art was like dogs marking their territory by urinating over something, and I think this idea is almost coincidentally related to my desire to cut the connections between time and reality. And John Cage s meaningless games were very influential for my work at that time.

31 五小时 Five Hours 广州红蚂蚁酒吧 Red Ants Bar, Guangzhou

32 姚嘉善 : 改变电视频道使改变新娘的决定 Change the TV Channel, Change the Bride s Decision 综合材料 Various materials 80X 60 X180 cm 陈劭雄 : PY: How would you relate these influences to the particular context you were facing at that time? CSX: It allowed me to effectively escape a lot of practical questions. 姚嘉善 : 陈劭雄 : PY: I suppose I am thinking of the context of China during the 1990s, in which time became fractured, sped up, and multiplied as a result of changes in the urban environment. Is this related to why you chose to deal with time in your art? CSX: Yes, living in Guangzhou in the 1990s it was possible to sense drastic changes in our social environment wrought by the process of urbanization at every minute of every day. But in terms of time, my feelings come more from memory. The changes in the structure of Chinese society have also been accompanied by a shift in value systems. In our middle school textbooks we had Mao Zedong s political theory of three worlds, but then after graduating from college we had Karl Popper s concept of World 3. These two totally opposed worldviews make up a classic example of the confusion of theories and values we were facing at that time. It s like taking all of these things mixed up in memory the Cultural Revolution, the educated youth, economic reform and opening and putting them all together in a short period of time but with the narrative destroyed, just like a movie preview. Albert Einstein made us see the relativity of space, but that era made us sense the indeterminacy of time.

33 姚嘉善 : PY: In addition to these thoughts about time and memory, you indicate an underlying question about the formation of worldview and perception. In your work, how did perception play a role? Works like Sight Adjuster seem to play with the medium of video itself, but also make reference to perception on a very human or individual level. CSX: I made several videos before Sight Adjuster, like Seesaw, where 陈劭雄 : I attached a video camera to my chest so the lens moved up and down with my breathing. Sight Adjuster is something of an extension of this video, related to the question of perception or observation. Between reality and video, I always feel like one of them must be deceptive. These works are intended to force the viewer into an alternative state of vision. Perception is always marked by error, and the style of perception determines the object perceived. 跷跷板 Seesaw 综合材料 Various materials 尺寸不定 Dimensions variable 1994

34 风景 -1 Landscape-1 单频影像 Single-channel video 30 00

35 1995

36 大尾象 Big Tail Elephant Group 姚嘉善 : 陈劭雄 : PY: Your early performances and some installations were created in the context of the Big Tail Elephant Group; who was the audience and what was their reaction? CSX: Hou Hanru has described Big Tail Elephant as a group of urban guerrillas, and it really was like that. All of the exhibitions could be considered very underground, and the audience was naturally limited to a small circle of friends. Our activities often took place at the entrances to bars, in the underground parking lots of office buildings, in abandoned old houses, on newly constructed roads, and in construction sites. If you count the people walking by as part of the audience then I guess the number would be much higher, but other than feeling that we were quite strange they really didn t care about what we were doing. So the audience really was just our close friends, our comrades in arms.

37 姚嘉善 : 姚嘉善 : 陈劭雄 : 陈劭雄 : PY: You say it was a thinking collective rather than a creative one, and yet you did create something in the end, perhaps not a single artwork but instead a context or platform that didn t exist before. Could one see it this way? PY: I find Big Tail Elephant Group is unique in that it is a collective, but at the same time works were individually produced. How would you describe your collective identity? CSX: Big Tail Elephant never had a manifesto or declaration of any kind because we always thought of creation as a process. Fixing our principles would have limited the space for change and self-criticism, but we did pay a lot of attention to the relationships between works in exhibitions. We got together and had conversations almost weekly, so we didn t feel that production had to be a format for dialogue and exchange. Big Tail Elephant used the single veto format of the U.N. Security Council whenever we made important decisions: the bill at dinner was always split strictly equally, and the place was always right in the middle of where we lived, a bit like international negotiations. Basically, Big Tail Elephant is both a method for considering the issues we were commonly interested in and a democratic attitude towards life, but it was not a creative collective. CSX: Yes. We faced a lot of difficulties in the 1990s. Conceptually, we were trying to get away from our educational background, but at the same time artistic production was under pressure from the environment surrounding official culture and we wanted to avoid mindlessly falling in line with the styles of art coming out of the center of power in Beijing. So building a healthy creative atmosphere was essential.

38 日常生活和城市化 Everyday Life and the City 姚嘉善 : 陈劭雄 : 风景 -2 Landscape-2 单频影像 Single-channel video 8 00

39 PY: Works like Landscape 2 draw upon the relationship between public and private space in the urban context. What attracted you to these ambiguous spaces? CSX: The word landscape is full of poetic and painterly sensibility in traditional aesthetics, but it has an entirely different meaning for residents of the developing southern cities. Urbanization definitely changes our sense of space: the tension between our idea of landscape and the actually existing landscape, or between public and private space is strongly related to ideological contradictions. I am intensely interested in the difference between what I want to see and what I really see for urban residents. 1996

40 视力矫正器 -3 Sight Adjuster X 160 X 300cm

41 1996

42 视力矫正器 -5 Sight Adjuster-5 尺寸不定 Dimensions variable

43 1997

44 警察与小偷 Cop and Thief 单频影像 Single-channel video 8 00

45 1997

46 街景 1 Street-1 90 x 120 cm

47 1998

48 第一大街 The First Street 30 X 30 X 1000 cm 姚嘉善 : 陈劭雄 :

49 PY: In the late 1990s your investigation into the city took the form of photographs and installations based around the street scenes of Guangzhou. Can you tell me how this series began for you and how it developed? 1998 CSX: I started the Streetscape series of photographic installations at the end of the 1990s. I was trying to invent a method of photography that could be adapted to urban life. Better yet, we could say that it was a direct response to the conditions of existence at that time. The physical presence of the individual experiencing such fast-changing urban scenery is entirely different from the passive observer of art. I wanted the viewer to share my experience of making the photograph when they view the work, so I made this piece in which the viewer has to have the experience of walking along a Guangzhou street to see the photograph. Then when Streetscape was shown in Western museums I felt it resembled a kind of tourism, a sort of reverse urban tourism. Or to be a bit lighter, a bit like takeaway or delivery food.

50 姚嘉善 : 陈劭雄 :

51 PY: Takeaway makes me think of something portable and on the move, almost like an inverse mode of tourism because the city not only travels to different places, but it also appears to be about encountering the familiar instead of the unfamiliar. CSX: Right.

52 姚嘉善 : 陈劭雄 :

53 PY: The Streetscape series makes me think of the city as a tableau, a sort of stage or theater in which daily events take place or unfold. Regular everyday patterns of places, people and events are given heightened meaning and drama. How do you view the role of the city in your work? CSX: The city is really a lot like a stage, and the windows of our own homes are like our seats at the theater. Urban architecture is the stage backdrop, so when there are suddenly new tall buildings in your neighborhood it s just like the shifting scenery of the play. Everything is temporary and a little bit fake. When you walk down the street you re both an actor and the audience. Every character has a lot of stories, as long as your lens is focused on him. In the city you have to work hard at earning money in order to keep on living, and all your work is just to get this ticket to the drama of the city. Streetscape is made so you can review the drama again after you get home.

54 视力矫正器 -7 Sight Adjuster-7 双频影像 Dual-channel video projection 尺寸不定 Dimensions variable

55 1998

56 使用说明 Commodity (Instruction Manual) 宝丽莱照片 Polaroid

57 1999

58 风景 -3 Landscape-3 网络作品 Website

59 1999

60 无题 Untitled 广西斜阳岛 Xieyang Island, Guangxi 3 00

61 2000

62 第三大街 - 柏林波斯坦广场 The Third Street-Potsdamer Platz, Berlin 85 x 128 cm

63 2001

64 第三大街 The Third Street 30 X 30 X1000 cm

65 2001

66 英雄 Hero 单频影像 Single-channel video 8 25

67 2001

68 花样反恐 Anti-Terrorism Variety 双频影像 Dual-channel video 5 00 姚嘉善 : 陈劭雄 :

69 2002 PY: These stories we encounter in the city also contain an element of violence, as your works Hero and Anti-Terrorism Variety allude to. One shows a petty, harmless act wielding a plastic gun and the other deals with the devastating events of 9/11, yet both employ a feeling of humor and playfulness. CSX: The theater of the city also includes television. Sitting in front of your TV set you can see some classic stories about the city you live in, or some other city: demolishing buildings, constructing roads, commercial mythologies, successful people out to make their fortune, romantic soap operas, and so on. But there are also lots of acts of violence: burglary and robbery, murder and arson, traffic accidents, and brutal historical scenes. If you watch too much it s easy to confuse reality and image. And because the TV is in your own home, you re often within just a couple meters of these international news events. It s easy to feel like they don t belong to the space of the other at all. Hero and Cop and Thief were about acting out media events in the real space of the city, and then turning the real events back into media. Anti- Terrorism Variety was really a direct reaction to 9/11, a kind of refraction of the televisual image onto my own city combining the experience of reality and the experience of video.

70 姚嘉善 : 陈劭雄 :

71 PY: To me, Anti-Terrorism Variety signifies a turning point for you, not just because its controversial subject matter won you increased visibility and recognition, but because it finally manages to bring to light an underlying tension in your work, namely the relationship between everyday life and politics, or, we could say, the politics of the everyday. What were the effects of the controversy it stirred? CSX: Anti-Terrorism Variety really influenced me more than anything else. After producing that work, my understanding of Edward Said s concept of the other shifted. I had a way to make more sensible judgments and take clearer positions. The standard for judgment of the questions of politics and culture under globalization began to weigh more on my personal conscience. The work never ran into public controversy when it was shown, but there were a few people who privately told me that they found my position politically incorrect. Then there were others that said nothing, but I could tell they were very unhappy. Originally I just felt that that particular image on TV was repeated over and over, too much during a particular period, and I wanted to make a series of new images to cover it over, to let everyone come out from that place.

72 Windows XP 单频影像 Single-channel video 2 00

73 2002

74 家景 Homescape 30 X 55 X40 cm each

75 2002

76 反恐象棋 Anti-Terrorism Chess 木雕 Wood 120 X120 X60 cm

77 2003

78 BBS: 假如他们来了 BBS: If They Are Coming 布面油画 Oil on canvas 70 x 90 cm each, 6 pieces total 自 911 之后, 全世界都采取了更严格的反劫机措施, 但是, 飞机撞大楼的这个方案就无效了吗? Since 9/11, strict anti-hijacking measures have been taken all over the world. But does this render the method of crashing planes into buildings useless? 准备到领事馆去执行任务的 汽车炸弹 最好是用面包车? 小汽车? 还是大卡车? 什么牌子的车最好? What is the best vehicle to crash into a consulate a van, a car, or a truck? Which brand should be used?

79 大家都知道 人肉炸弹 在地铁引爆的效果最佳, 可是, 用一个什么样的人来实现这个计划最隐蔽? As we all know, suicide bombing is the most effect method of destruction on the subway. But what kind of person should be chosen in order to carry out the plan in the most covert way possible? 2003

80 控制广州城需要多少军队? How many soldiers are required to occupy the city of Guangzhou? 轰炸广州需要多少架次的 B52? 需要多少炸弹? 什么样的炸弹最合适? How many sorties would a B-52 have to carry out in order to bomb Guangzhou? How many bombs would it need? What kind of explosives would be most appropriate?

81 占领广州后, 要举办什么样的艺术活动以推广美国文化? After the occupation of Guangzhou, what kind of activities what kind of art activities should be used to promote American culture?

82 Zippo 现成品加工 Altered object 55 X 37 mm

83 姚嘉善 : 陈劭雄 : 2004

84 PY: When you say come out from that place what do you mean exactly? From inside the world of televised media back to reality, or from the incident itself? CSX: I think both are valid, but the question of the media is more extreme. Those few shots were repeated on TV almost constantly for a year, creating a kind of physical confusion that affected everyone. After 9/11, every time my four-year-old daughter saw a plane in the sky with tall buildings around she would ask me Dad, will the plane run into that building?

85

86 姚嘉善 : 陈劭雄 : PY: I think it is interesting, because from the looks of it this work deals with heavily political subject matter and international political issues, but in actuality it bears a resemblance to your other works. That is to say, it really has more to do with everyday life in that, for that moment, this scene was everyday life. CSX: Yes, it even altered our visual experience, creating a new relationship between buildings and planes. That infamous shot has already entered the lives of everyone, just like any other element of popular culture. When the children started playing a new game I ll be the terrorist and you be the anti-terrorist police the character of the whole event started to change. Under that background, when local governments everywhere started engaging in counterterrorism maneuvers it became more and more like a game. So I made Anti-Terrorism Chess and the Zippo lighter. 国际象棋 Chess 玻璃钢 Fiberglass 200 x 200 x 200 cm

87 BBS: 假如他们来了, 地拉那 BBS: If They Are Coming (Tirana) 布面油画 Oil on canvas 70 x 90 cm each, 5 pieces total

88 家景 2005 Homescape X 55 X 40 cm

89 姚嘉善 : 陈劭雄 : PY: So in a way there is a connection between political reality and the virtual. Did your work dealing with computers begin at this point? I am thinking of your works BBS and Windows XP. CSX: In the BBS series I painted some urban landscapes paired with hypothetical questions for the audience to answer during the exhibition. The situations included an American invasion and a terrorist attack. After 9/11, watching TV or surfing internet and seeing news like the bombing of Baghdad or terrorist attacks anywhere in the world always made me think that such events could be happening closer to home very quickly. A lot of things in reality seem to be coming to resemble fiction, while fictions increasingly turn into reality. There s nothing vague about that they say it s happening and then suddenly it s here. In Windows XP I just used the Microsoft operating system name because it seems that terrorist attacks and counter-terrorism resemble the relationship between computer viruses and anti-virus software. 2005

90 艺术媒介 Artistic Medium 墨水城市 Ink City 单频动画影象 Single-channel animation 3 00 姚嘉善 : CSX: Haha, but don t you move freely between curating, criticism, and teaching? You could also write a novel Beijing must have a lot of stories. 陈劭雄 : 姚嘉善 : 陈劭雄 : PY: Even more interesting is your switch from using computer media to using ink paintings for videos. It is as if you returned to a more traditional sort of creative process. In your view, how did these disparate media join up? CSX: I feel much more relaxed when working simultaneously in all different media. I like the saying the best rest is a new type of work. After making those works related to international politics I felt that my own cultural position was reaffirmed, and I started PY: I could never write a novel. I fear I am paying more attention to local culture. These just not cut out for that sort of writing. kinds of traditional methods and media are Writing art criticism and writing fiction are actually great. They ve taught me a lot about quite different, don t you think? The language what video can do. is not the same. One could say the same about artistic medium. Do video and ink painting employ different languages? 姚嘉善 : CSX:Seeing these two different things put together and then having to find a balance between them, it really makes me happy. For a while I would pick up a camera and not really 陈劭雄 : know what to shoot. I felt like there was a lot of falsity in video because the cameraman only records what he is interested in. A lot of things are omitted, but video still repackages everything to have this superficial presentation PY: That saying is quite nice; I ought to of truth. Photography, similarly, is a kind change my own work method now and then. of accidental documentation of things around Except I suspect it is a bit easier for us. Creating an ink painting from a photograph artists to change and adapt in ways that feels much more suited to memory, and the writers/curators cannot. memories the photograph can evoke are more

91 2005

92 plentiful. When we recall a certain period of time, we generally remember it in a series of still frames, not as a real event. Sometimes the event becomes a commentary on the image, rather than the image acting as a documentation of an event. PY: Actually, knowing what is cooked and what is not is not an easy task. It is an apt metaphor though, since I have always thought that the hardest thing in producing an artwork is knowing when it is finished, knowing when it is cooked, so to speak. CSX: Right, it s very difficult to judge when something is done, and it often takes someone 姚嘉善 : from the outside to test it. That s why we say that the concept of a work is a collaboration between artist and audience, or a community of 陈劭雄 : taste. PY: Sure, but photography and memory are always linked. To take the photos and make them into paintings is another further step, but couldn t you have just used the photographs themselves to make the video? CSX:Memory is always altered by the mind. A photograph presents an opportunity, but does not necessarily call up a memory. In the process of copying the images by hand even more opportunities come forth. The photograph is raw, and the painting is cooked. It s best to give the audience something cooked to look at the artist should be a chef. 姚嘉善 : 陈劭雄 :

93

94 集体记忆 : 北京天安门 Collective Memory: Tiananmen, Beijing 布面油画 Ink on canvas 170 x 300 cm

95 2006

96 西京人的合作 Collaborations with the Xijing Men 广东东京 GuangdongTokyo 水墨, 宣纸, 综合材料 Ink on rice paper, Various materials

97 姚嘉善 : 姚嘉善 陈劭雄 : 陈劭雄 : PY:Had you ever collaborated with other artists before? CSX:I had never done anything like that before. But the goal of this collaboration was similar to that of Big Tail Elephant to strengthen our immunity to the epidemics of the art world. 姚嘉善 : PY: How did you begin working together with Tsuyoshi 陈劭雄 : Ozawa? How did you meet each other? And how did you start to discuss the idea of collaborating? CSX: We met early on, at the Bordeaux stop of Cities on the Move. In the summer of 2005, at a dinner in Tokyo organized by the Mori Museum, Ozawa and I were drinking and started talking about the relationship between PY: Do you like it? What kind of effect does it have on Japan and China, because at that time things were a bit your artistic practice overall? tense politically. We both thought that it might be interesting to collaborate. That August, he brought his CSX: I do like it, and it has a huge effect on my whole family to Guangzhou and we discussed the details practice. It s like having a comparison for my own work, of our project, which started officially that September. but nothing as simple as an opposition between China and The first project used a method we called qu shui liu the West. Chinese contemporary art continually commits shang [a drinking game transmitted from classical China a common error, which is the ideology of comparing China to Japan in which participants drink cups of wine floating and the West. I think methods like that are sometime on a small canal before passing them on for good luck]. quite idiotic and naïve. We would each be painting in our respective studios, then use courier delivery services to send our work to the other person, who would continue working on the same piece. Because we have different national identities and academic backgrounds, we often had completely different responses to the same question, which made the work very interesting. 2005

98 夏天的假日 Summer Holiday 综合材料 Various materials 尺寸不定 Dimensions variable

99 2006

100 墨水日记 Ink Diary 单频动画影象 Single-channel animation 3 00 ( 宣纸, 墨水,Ink on rice paper, 35 x 46 cm each)

101 2006

102 姚嘉善 : 姚嘉善 : 陈劭雄 : 陈劭雄 : PY: It s a shame that I was never able to see this project. But I know it had an element of collectivization, and that it drew upon facets of everyday life. In this context, what was the role of everyday life? Because usually everyday life is something we think of as quite PY: Your first collaboration was the Guangdong-Tokyo personally defined. project you did for the Guangzhou Triennial in The starting point for this work was about location and place, a dialogue between two cities; then later this shifted to become about two different households and family relations. How did this transition come about? CSX: To turn artistic production into a form of life, or to create another type of life inside art work, is to resist the challenges of real life. Real life normal life is extremely limited, functioning as a social relation without individual feeling or introspection. CSX: Guangdong-Tokyo was a reflection of our varying understandings of ethnic identity, shared history, and international politics as individuals living under divergent social backgrounds. This kind of project naturally developed into a more individual exchange on Creation is not an interruption of life, but rather a frame of reference developed in parallel with normal life. In Summer Holiday I brought my family into this kind of other lifestyle, and it was an unforgettable trip. the register of the everyday, like the Summer Holiday exhibition at Boers-Li Gallery in In that project, my wife and Ozawa s wife got into a conversation that turned into a denunciation of the two of us, and our children s games involved their educational differences. We made a work each day for the 18 days of the project, and every object in our daily lives had the possibility of turning into a work of art. 广东东京 -3 Ink Diary 综合材料 Single-channel animation 尺寸不定 Dimensions variable

103 你知道西京吗? Do you know Xijing? 综合材料 Single-channel animation 尺寸不定 Dimensions variable 姚嘉善 : 姚嘉善 : 陈劭雄 : 陈劭雄 : PY: Afterwards you and Ozawa started to collaborate with a third artist, Gimhongsok. How did he enter the picture? CSX: Later Ozawa and I decided we needed more people to be involved, and we both saw Gimhongsok as the most interesting artist in Korea. During another exhibition at the Mori Museum in Tokyo in early 2007, we invited Gimhongsok to join our collaboration, and he gladly agreed. As we developed the Xijing project, we started calling ourselves the Xijing Men. PY: Where does the name Xijing Men come from? Could you explain a little? Does Xijing have anything to do with the west? CSX: Historically, Xi an in China, the capital of Japan, and Seoul in Korea have all been known as Xijing [Western Capital]. Today, China has Beijing [Northern Capital] and Nanjing [Southern Capital] and Japan has Tokyo Dongjing, or [Eastern Capital], but there is no Xijing. We felt that a place had fallen into oblivion, so we decided to conceptually reconstruct the city. But I don t think it s related to the West. The West we use in reference to Xijing is a relative term, and doesn t event exist geographically. It exists only as an unclear idea, feeling linguistically familiar almost as if it had been stolen from us, creating a sort of utopian homesickness. 2007

104 墨水东西 Ink Things 单频动画影象 Single-channel animation 3 00 ( 宣纸, 墨水,Ink on rice paper, 35 x 46 cm each)

105 2006

106 集体记忆 : 香港中环 Collective Memory: Hong Kong Central District 宣纸, 印泥 Ink on rice paper 170 x 300 cm

107 2006

108 看见和看不见的, 知道和不知道的 Visible and Invisible, Known and Unknown 展览现场 Installation view

109 2007

110 上海城市规划院 Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Center 北京天坛 Beijing Temple of Heaven 上海美术馆 Shanghai Art Museum 香港青马大桥 Hong Kong Tsing Ma Bridge

111 北京西客站 Beijing West Railway Station 北京中南海 Beijing Zhongnanhai 上海人民广场 Shanghai People s Square 北京饭店 Beijing Hotel

112 集体记忆 : 北京鸟巢 Collective Memory: Beijing Bird's Nest 宣纸, 印泥 Ink on rice paper 170 x 300 cm

113 2006

114 日子 The Days 四频动画影像 Four-channel animation 1 00 姚嘉善 : 姚嘉善 : 陈劭雄 : PY: To be honest, Xijing Olympics is one of my favorite works in recent years. Perhaps this is 陈劭雄 : because of its humorous elements. I feel much of the contemporary art I see in China these days truly lacks this lighthearted approach. CSX: Right, because a lot of contemporary artists like pretending to be cool. 姚嘉善 : PY: Did you think up the concept for Xijing Men at the same time as conceiving of this initial project? Do you think the people in the video believe Xijng is a real place or an imaginary place with the name Xijing? For me, this work is about location and place but even more so about issues of identity. CSX: In our first project Ozawa went to Okinawa, Gimhongsok went to Yeongjongdo Island, and I went to Hainan asking the locals if they knew of a place called Xijing. The majority of people responded positively, describing places that, although separated by vast distances, shared some common memories. Do these memories come from myth or imagination? We have no way of knowing, but we can be sure that they don t come from historical knowledge or personal experience. Xijing as a concept should act as a provocation of a universally shared outlook on humanistic values. As such, our second project was the Xijing Olympics, carried out on the same schedule as the Beijing Olympics. It was a direct interrogation of the traditional Olympics spirit. 陈劭雄 : PY: I suppose it has to do with an overall attitude that I sometimes sense, where art is rendered as purely serious and humor is seen to detract from conceptual meaning or depth. CSX: Haha, but if the seriousness is real then that s good too. I think that the Xijing Men are serious, but placed in this very unserious environment the project of course appears quite humorous. 姚嘉善 : 陈劭雄 :

115 2008

116 nationality and identity, which make up the most important problems for the Xijing Men. I m very interested in the divergences in performance and method of creation, and I ve learned a lot from these differences. PY: We still have not touched upon your most recent project with Xijing Men for the Tate Liverpool. Could you 姚嘉善 : explain a little for me? CSX: For the exhibition The Fifth Floor in the Tate Liverpool, Xijing Men collaborated with a local youth 陈劭雄 : theater group, making a shadow puppet version of Journey to the West. In the story, an old person, a strong but stupid man, a fashionable young woman, and a troublemaking dog meet by chance. After a conflict they are reconciled by a magic mirror, and then decide to go to Xijing together. At the entrance, they are refused entry for failing the PY: In your previous works Xijing appears as a totally interview at the immigration checkpoint. We started the fictional idea, but this time it seems to have become story, but the resolution was determined by the Liverpool something real. Was this your intention? youth theater troupe. CSX: We ve gone from asking questions about Xijing at the beginning to organizing an Olympics, and now to the Xijing 姚嘉善 : immigration office it really is getting more and more real. I ll tell you, we re also planning on buying some property, 陈劭雄 : and then developing a farm there. Because of the global financial crisis, we d like to raise our own food, and turn our artistic production back to the most primitive form of physical labor. 姚嘉善 : 陈劭雄 : PY: From the sounds of it, this different approach is different from your previous collaborations. Would you agree? PY: You plan to grow food? Do you even know how? Where will the location be? CX: Yes, in this project there s a certain relationship between creation and education. And the collaboration CSX: We want to find a small island somewhere in the Pacific, was not restricted to the three of us, there were also but we haven t even found funding yet. We ll pick up some other people participating. In October we started the same agricultural knowledge. Do you want to join too? project in Seoul with a group of Korean students, but because of their different educations and imaginations they developed a different ending. The medium was also 姚嘉善 : 可以啊. a bit different, and the production took the form of a PY: OK! puppet show. This project also involves the question of

117 欢迎到西京 : 西京奥运 Welcome to Xijing: Xijing Olympics 影像与综合材料 video and various materials 尺寸不定 Dimensions variable 2008

118

119

120 这是西京 : 西游记 This is Xijing : Journey to the West 木偶剧 Puppet show 9 18

121 2008

122 BOCCA 综合材料 Various materials 香港 PARA/SITE 艺术空间 PARA/SITE art space, Hong Kong

123 当代艺术市场 The Art Market 2008 姚嘉善 : 陈劭雄 : PY: I would like to change the topic a bit let s talk about some of your non-xijing works. The BOCCA project began in October 2008, right? At that time the economy was still doing alright, wasn t it? CSX: Not really, the economy had started having problems even then, but it was not then apparent that the crisis would influence the art market as well. In the last few years Chinese contemporary art has demonstrated a value equated to currency and a favored avenue for investment, but the art world has buried its collective head in the sand and refused to explicitly link these elements together; with this work, I want to make everyone see the results. I did the project in Hong Kong, where there are banks everywhere. BOCCA, the Bank of Contemporary Chinese Art, is supposed to equate art, monetary currencies, and gold. But before the exhibition ended the financial crisis had already begun to affect the art market, and I don t think my bank managed to find any interested investors.

124

125 姚嘉善 : 姚嘉善 : 陈劭雄 : 陈劭雄 : PY: Was there a big difference between this project and the reality of the Chinese art market? I am referring to that particular moment when the market was active, not necessarily the current situation. CSX: If I had done the BOCCA project two years earlier, found investment, registered as a company, and gone into business, we might PY: We should all strive to be that way. I heard from someone that even have been able to save the market. Haha. artists in China were no longer making work because there are no exhibitions. That sort of mindset is troublesome; producing work only for the sake of exhibition opportunities reflects that something in the 姚嘉善 : system has gone awry. Art is something that one should continue making no matter what, even if there is no chance to show it. CSX: That s right, and to only make work for commercial exhibitions is even worse. Artistic creation is a part of life, or maybe I should 陈劭雄 : say it creates a more interesting version of life. The joy of creation is already the greatest reward for an artist. We need exhibitions to foster exchange between work and audience, and we also need money to support ourselves and keep making work, but I really don t like seeing the market as the primary force pushing art forward. PY: Perhaps! But is saving it necessary? I have always thought that observing the market in its ascendant phase is interesting, but watching it fall downwards has its merits too. The question is, who can weather the storm, so to speak, and afterwards, what will the situation for contemporary art in China look like? CSX: Right, but with the market falling so quickly, you barely have a chance to observe it before it s gone. To make a joke, this is called freefall it s all coming down because of gravity. I believe everyone can make it through the financial crisis, because artists can and should become accustomed to all kinds of living environments. What will Chinese art be like afterwards? That s a difficult question to answer. I only know that, whatever the conditions are like, I ll keep making good work, just like over a decade ago with Big Tail Elephant. 姚嘉善 : 陈劭雄 : PY: You sound quite optimistic. 姚嘉善 : 陈劭雄 : PY: Yes, I agree. One last question: when you are making a new work, what is the most enjoyable part for you? CSX: First and foremost is the process. The process makes me forget time, and then the work comes out of that the work itself is what I want to see most, and I love the surprise of finding out that a particular piece can exceed my own conscious intelligence. I think only creation can make us discover that we know how to mess around, and I think only messing around can prove to ourselves that we re still living. March 2009, Beijing CSX: I m ready to continue my long and bitter struggle.

126 公共秘密 Public Secret 布面丙烯 Acrylic on canvas 116X 68 cm each, 12 pieces total

127 2009

128 信则有 Seeing is Believing 塑料薄膜刻字与影子 Plastic film, carved letters, and shadows 尺寸不定 Dimensions variable

129 2009

130 生活工作在北京 / 广州 1962 生于中国广东省汕头市 2009 信则有,Boers-Li 画廊, 北京, 中国 2008 集体记忆,Art & Public - Cabinet PH, 日内瓦, 瑞士一招即中,Para/Site 艺术空间, 香港 2007 看见的和看不见的, 知道的和不知道的,Boers-Li 画廊, 北京, 中国陈劭雄, Barbara Gross 画廊, 慕尼黑, 德国 2006 陈劭雄, Art & Public - Cabinet PH, 日内瓦, 瑞士看谁运气好, 比翼艺术空间, 上海, 中国纸上墨水城市, 四合苑画廊, 北京, 中国 2005 墨水城市, 四合苑空间, 北京, 中国双重风景,Grace Alexander 当代画廊, 苏黎世, 瑞士 2003 反 : 陈劭雄, 维他命创意空间, 广州, 中国 2009 超级高速公路上的第一站, 白南准艺术中心, 首尔, 韩国 2008 没有边界的东方,Louis Vuitton 空间, 巴黎, 法国城市再生, 香港 / 深圳城市建筑双年展, 香港, 中国想象的,2008 利物浦双年展, 利物浦, 英国中国电站 3, 卢森堡大公现代艺术博物馆, 卢森堡曼彻斯特亚洲三年展, 曼彻斯特, 英国还没到时间放假,ev+a, 利默瑞克第 7 届光州双年展, 光州, 韩国西京奥运,Boers-Li 画廊, 北京, 中国亚洲, 第 3 届南京三年展, 南京, 中国第五层, 泰特美术馆, 利物浦, 英国首尔站台 2008: 没话要说, 首尔, 韩国 2007 美好的一天, 罗丹美术馆, 首尔, 韩国笑之展 : 当代艺术中的幽默, 森美术馆, 东京, 日本当下的未来 当设计遇到科幻, 卢森堡大公现代艺术博物馆, 卢森堡群聚效应 Ⅱ, 伯尔尼艺术馆, 伯尔尼, 瑞士重新启动 第三届成都双年展, 成都, 中国亚洲城市网络, 首尔美术馆, 韩国明天, SAMUSO 当代艺术空间, 首尔, 韩国美丽新世界, 长征艺术空间, 北京 / 广东美术馆, 中国 2006 第五届深圳国际水墨画双年展 : 水墨, 生活, 趣味 - 要想甜加点盐, 何香凝美术馆, 深圳, 中国看起来都一样?Sandretto Re Rebaudengo 基金会, 都灵, 意大利中国电厂, 蛇形画廊, 伦敦, 英国夏天的假日,Boers-Li 画廊, 北京, 中国渗 : 移景与幻想, 广东美术馆, 广州, 中国广东东京, Ota Fine Arts, 东京, 日本在过去和未来之间 : 来自中国的新摄影和录象, 世界文化宫, 柏林, 德国镜子里的世界 亚洲当代录像艺术, 现代艺术协会, 澳大利亚 2005 城市开门 : 深圳建筑双年展,OCT 艺术中心, 深圳, 中国在过去和未来之间 : 来自中国的新摄影和录象,Victoria and Albert 美术馆, 伦敦, 英国第二届广州三年展 : 别样 一个特殊的现代化实验空间, 广东美术馆, 广州, 中国第三届地拉那双年展 :Go Inside, 国立美术馆, 地拉那, 阿尔巴尼亚车臣紧急双年展 : 一个从巴黎到 Grosny 的手提箱, 东京宫, 巴黎, 法国跟我学!, 森美术馆, 东京, 日本聚焦 中国当代摄影和录像, 中国美术馆, 北京, 中国蒙彼利埃 中国 : 第一届蒙彼利埃中国当代艺术双年展, 蒙彼利埃, 法国中国! 中国!! 中国!!!Grace Alexander 画廊, 苏黎世, 瑞士变迁的现实, 外滩 3 号上海画廊, 上海, 中国 2004 制造差异, 斯德哥尔摩历史博物馆, 斯德哥尔摩, 瑞典聚焦 中国当代摄影和录像, 圣地亚哥大学画廊, 美国 / 上海美术馆, 上海, 中国逗留香港, 汉雅轩画廊, 香港, 中国轻而易举 : 上海拼图 , 挪威国立美术馆, 奥斯陆, 挪威在东边的南边的西边,Villa Arson, 国立当代艺术中心, 尼斯艺术中心, 法国在过去和未来之间 : 来自中国的新摄影和录像,ICP 国际摄影中心, 纽约, 美国

131 2003 第 50 届威尼斯双年展主题展 : 紧急地带, 威尼斯, 意大利日常 来自日本 中国 韩国 泰国的当代艺术,Kunstforeningen, 哥本哈根, 丹麦第 10 届电影双年展, 日内瓦, 瑞士制造天堂,Le Parvis 当代艺术中心, 法国第 5 系统 : 后规划时代的公共艺术, 何香凝美术馆, 深圳, 中国 2002 对不起, 不方便了,Siam 艺术中心, 曼谷, 泰国停 : 光州双年展, 光州, 韩国新国际主义,Kunstforeningen, 哥本哈根, 丹麦金色的收获, 萨格勒布美术馆, 克罗地亚润化 : 亚太媒体艺术节, 中华世纪坛, 北京, 中国重新解读 : 中国实验艺术十年, 广东美术馆, 广州, 中国都市营造 : 上海双年展, 上海美术馆, 上海, 中国施工中 : 亚洲当代艺术展, 日本国际交流基金 / 东京歌剧城画廊, 东京, 日本合成现实, 远洋艺术中心, 北京, 中国 2001 中国新媒体艺术展, 藏酷新媒体艺术空间, 北京, 中国城市俚语, 何香凝美术馆, 深圳, 中国今日中国摄影,Canvas 画廊, 阿姆斯特丹, 荷兰生活在此时, 汉堡火车站美术馆, 柏林, 德国非线性叙事 : 新媒体艺术节, 中国美术学院展览馆, 杭州 2000 我们的中国朋友, 鲍豪斯大学 /ACC 画廊, 魏玛, 德国艺术中的个人与社会, 广东美术馆, 广州, 中国亚太媒体艺术节, 布里斯班, 澳大利亚釜山国际当代艺术节, 釜山美术馆, 韩国不合作方式, 东艺画廊, 上海, 中国第二届国际多媒体艺术节,Urbains Belfort, 法国 1999 运动中的城市 ( ), 路易斯安娜当代艺术中心, 丹麦 / Hayward 画廊, 伦敦, 英国 / 曼谷, 泰国 / 芬兰国家画廊, 赫尔辛基快镜, 中国新录像艺术展, 澳门当代艺术中心, 澳门, 中国超市当代艺术展览, 上海, 中国第 9 届国际摄影双年展, 墨西哥图像中心, 墨西哥市, 墨西哥第 8 届电影双年展, 日内瓦, 瑞士 1998 媒体转换 : 第 11 届柏林录像节, 波德维尔中心, 伯林, 德国运动中的城市 (2 3),CAPC, 波尔多, 法国 / P.S.1 当代艺术中心, 纽约长岛美国 16 届世界录像节, 阿姆斯特丹, 荷兰大尾象, 伯尔尼美术馆, 伯尔尼, 瑞士裂口, 香港理工大学, 香港, 中国反了,PS1, 纽约, 美国 / 现代美术馆, 旧金山, 美国 1997 另一次长征 : 中国观念艺术, 布雷达, 荷兰运动中的城市,Secession, 维也纳, 奥地利中国影像艺术展, 中央美术学院美术馆, 北京, 中国新亚洲新城市新艺术, 上海当代艺术展览厅, 上海, 中国 1996 现象与影像 : '96 录像艺术展, 中国美术学院画廊, 杭州, 中国 1994 没有空间, 三育路 14 号, 广州, 中国 1993 大尾象组 3, 红蚂蚁酒吧, 广州, 中国 1992 大尾象组 2, 传媒大学, 广州, 中国 1991 大尾象组 1, 工人文化宫, 广州, 中国

132 CHEN SHAOXIONG Lives and works in Beijing / Guangzhou 1962 B o r n i n S h a n t o u, G u a n g d o n g Province, PR China Solo Exhibitions 2009 Seeing is Believing, Boers-Li Gallery, Beijing, China 2008 Collective Memory, Art & Public - Cabinet PH, Geneva, Switzerland Cash-In, Para/Site Art Space, Hong Kong 2007 Visible and Invisible, Known and Unknown, Boers-Li Gallery, Beijing, China Chen Shaoxiong, Barbara Gross Galerie, Munich, Germany 2006 Chen Shaoxiong, Art & Public - Cabinet PH, Geneva, Switzerland Ink City on Paper, The Courtyard Gallery, Beijing, China Let s See Who s Lucky, BizArt Art Center, Shanghai, China 2005 Double Landscape, Grace Alexander Contemporary, Zurich, Switzerland Ink City: New Works by Chen Shaoxiong, The Courtyard Annex, Beijing, China 2003 Anti-C.S.X., Vitamin Creative Space, Guangzhou, China Group Exhibitions 2009 The First Stop on the Super Highway, Nam June Paik Art Center, Seoul, Korea 2008 Orient Without Borders, Espace Louis Vuitton, Paris, France Refabricating City, Hong Kong & Shenzhen Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture, Shenzhen/Hong Kong, China Made Up, Liverpool Biennial 2008, Liverpool, U.K. Seventh Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju, Korea Xijing Olympics, Boers-Li Gallery, Beijing, China Asia, Third Nanjing Triennial, Nanjing, China China Power Station 3, Mudam Luxembourg, Luxembourg Asian Art Triennial, Manchester, U.K. Too Early for Vacation, ev+a, Limerick, U.K. The Fifth Floor, Tate Liverpool, Liverpool, U.K. Seoul Station 2008: I Have Nothing to Say but I Am Saying It, Seoul, South Korea 2007 One Fine Day, Rodin Gallery, Seoul, South Korea Tomorrow, Samuso Space for Contemporary Art, Seoul, South Korea Reboot: The Third Chengdu Biennale, Chengdu, China City_Net Asia 2007, Seoul Museum Of Art, Seoul, South Korea Beautiful New World: Contemporary Visual Culture From Japan, Long March Space, Beijing/ Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, China Tomorrow Now When Design Meets Science Fiction, Mudam Musèe d Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg Critical Mass Kritische Masse II, Kunsthalle Bern, Bern, Switzerland All About Laughter: Humor in Contemporary Art, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan 2006 International Ink Biennale of Shenzhen: Ink, Life, Taste-To Sugar Add Some Salt, He Xiangning Museum of Art, Shenzhen, China Alllooksame? Art China Japan Korea, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy China Power Station: Part 1, Serpentine Gallery, London, U.K. Summer Holiday, Boers-Li Gallery, Beijing, China Infiltration: Idylls and Visions, Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, China Guangdong-Tokyo, Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo, Japan China-Between Past and Future, House of World Cultures, Berlin, Germany Mirror Worlds New Video Art from Asia, Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia 2005 Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video From China, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, U.K. City, Open Door! Shenzhen Biennale of Urbanism/ Architecture, Shenzhen, China The 2nd Guangzhou Triennial: BEYOND-an Extraordinary Space of Experimentation for Modernization, Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, China The 3rd Tirana Biennale: Go Inside, National Art Gallery, Tirana, Albania Follow Me! Chinese Art at the Threshold of the New Millennium, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan Montpellier-China: 1 (The 1St Montpellier Biennale of Chinese Contemporary Art), Montpellier, France Emergency Biennale in Chechnya: A Suitcase from Paris to Grosny, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France Zooming into Focus, National Art Museum of China, Beijing, China China! China!! China!!! Grace Alexander Contemporary Art Gallery, Zurich, Switzerland In-Between Realities, Shanghai Gallery of Art Three on the Bund, Shanghai, China

133 2004 Making Differences, Historiska Museet, Stockholm, Sweden Zooming into Focus, University Art Gallery San Diego State University, San Diego, U.S.; Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai, China Stopover Hong Kong, Hanart T Z Gallery, Hong Kong, China Light As Fuck! Shanghai Assemblage , The National Museum of Art, Norway, Oslo A l1ouest du sud de l1est, Center of Contemporary Art, Sète/Villa Arson, Nice, France Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video From China, International Center of Photography, New York 2003 The Fifth System: Public Art in the Age of Post- Planning, Hexiangning Art Museum, Shenzhen, China _Fabricated Paradises, Le Parvis Centre of Contemporary Art, Ibos, France _10th Biennial of the Moving Image, Geneva, Switzerland _Everyday-Contemporary Art from Japan, China, Korea, Thailand, Kunstforeningen, Copenhagen, Denmark _Z.O.U.: Zone of Urgency, 50th Venice Biennale 2002 Pause: Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju, Korea _New Internationalism, Kunstforeningen, Copenhagen, Denmark _Golden Harvest, the Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia _Moist: Multimedia Art Asia Pacific, The Art Museum of China Millennium Monument, Beijing, China _Reinterpretation: A Decade of Experimental Chinese Art- Guangzhou Triennial, Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, China _Urban Creation Shanghai Biennale, Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai, China _Under Construction, Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, Tokyo, Japan _Synthetic Reality, East Modern Art Centre, Beijing, China _Sorry for the Inconveniece, Siam Art Space, Bangkok, Thailand 2001 New Media Art of China, Loft New Media Art Space, Beijing, China City Slang, He Xiangning Museum, Shenzhen, China _Chinese Photography Now, Canvas International Art, Amsterdam, Netherlands _Living in Time, National Gallery Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Germany _The New-Media Art Festival: Non-Linear Narrative, China Academy of Fine Arts, Hangzhou, China 2000 Our Chinese Friends, Bauhaus-University and ACC Gallery, Weimar, Germany Individual and Society in Art, Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangdong, China Multimedia Art Asia Pacific 2000 Festival, Brisbane Powerhouse, Brisbane, Australia Pusan International Contemporary Art Festival 2000, Pusan Metropolitan Museum of Art, Pusan, South Korea Fuck Off, Eastlink Gallery, Shanghai, China 2nd Festival International d Arts Multimedia, Urbains Belfort, Belfort, France 1999 Cities on the Move 4,5,6,7, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark; Hayward Gallery, London, U.K.; Bangkok, Thailand; National Gallery, Helsinki, Finland Fast>>Forward: New Chinese Video Art, Contemporary Art Center, Macau, China Art For Sale, Shanghai Plaza, Shanghai, China 9th International Photography Biennial, Image Center, Mexico City, Mexico 8th Biennial of Moving Images, Saint-Gervais, Geneva, Switzerland 1998 Breach, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China Transmediale 98, 11th Video Festival, Podewil, Berlin, Germany Cities on the Move 2,3: CAPC, Bordeaux; PS1, New York, U.S. 16th World-Wide Video Festival, Amsterdam, Netherlands Inside Out, PS1, New York; MoMA, New York; San Francisco, U.S. Big Tail Elephant, Kunsthalle Bern, Bern, Germany 1997 Another Long March: Chinese Conceptual Art, Breda, The Netherlands Demonstration of Video Art 97 China, Gallery of Central Academy of Fine Arts,Beijing, China Cities on the Move, Secession, Vienna, Austria New Asia, New City, New Art, Shanghai Contemporary Art Exhibition Hall, Shanghai, China 1996 Phenomenon and Image Video Art, China Fine Art Academy, Hangzhou, China 1994 No Room, No.14 Sanyu Road, Guangzhou, China 1993 Third Exhibition of Big Tail Elephant Group, Red Ants Bar, Guangzhou, China 1992 Big Tail Elephant Group, Broadcast/Television University, Guangzhou, China 1991 Exhibition of Big Tail Elephant Group, Guangzhou Workers Palace, Guangzhou, China

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135 出版 / Published: t i m e z o n e 8 东八时区出版社北京市朝阳区酒仙桥路 4 号 8503 邮箱邮编 : 电话 Tel: 传真 Fax: Boers-Li Gallery Boers-Li 画廊 设计 王江 Design Wang Jiang 文章 侯瀚如 Essay Hou Hanru 对话 姚嘉善 + 陈劭雄 Dialogue Pauline J. Yao + Chen Shaoxiong 翻译 武铃 + 岳鸿飞 Translation Wu Ling + Robin Peckham 校对 皮力 + 包文麟 + 侯瀚如 + 姚嘉善 Proofing Pi Li + Waling Boers + Hou Hanru + Pauline J. Yao 编辑 岳鸿飞 Editing Robin Peckham 所有图片来自 Boers-Li 画廊及艺术家本人所有文字来自 Boers-Li 画廊及其作者本书所有版权由 Boers-Li 画廊 东八时区 艺术家所有 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. All works of art copyright the artists, their heirs and assigns. 中国印刷 Printed in China 2009 年 4 月 April 2009

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